Relationship mapping – know who you know

In these days of cyber networks its easy to think we are really well connected, have contacts,  know people and are linked in.  Well relationships are critical to  leadership and even more so when taking others on a change journey… so why not pay a little more attention to the relationship we have.  Making explicit what is implicit is  a starting point.  As an exercise for individuals relationship mapping is a great way to make you think about who you know, and what they know and how they influence your success.

See the text below for a way of mapping what is, what should be and how to get from one to the other… no man is an island, or even a small nationalistic country – co operation, interdependence and plain old scratching each others back is back in fashion… not that it was ever really out.

If you don’t know who you know, how can you manage relationships to ensure you are successful in leading change? We all have circles of influence – some formal given by position and rank, and many more informal given by history, shared interests, debts, favors and recommendations. If you want to really make an impact in change leadership you should know who to bring into your camp who may not be there, and how to influence the ones who already are.

Take a large blank canvas; a flip chart pad is idea, but the back of a poster or a large format paper. A3 is probably the smallest which will work well.

Draw a circle in the centre with your name or initials in the centre. Then start to map the surrounding space with the names, or if you only know the position/title of the people who are in your network currently. Follow these guiding rules:

The most frequent meetings/ interactions should be closer to your circle.

Importance of the relationship is shown by size of circle

Influence you have is show by the size of the arrow going from you them

Influence they have over you is show by the arrow going from them to you.

You will finally after some thought have a diagram like this below representing the current state of you network.

The next step we encourage people we work with to take is to then think about the distance, should any be nearer, denoting more frequent interaction? Should any be further away? Should there be anyone on this map that is not currently? Are the arrows showing the relationships and influence that you need to be successful? Who should you be more influential with in this network? It’s also useful to ask if there are people in the network that should not be there for this project, but demand attention regardless.

We then ask them to update or redraw the map – showing the network that they should have as a change leader.

The second map shows the change in line strength denoting reducing or increasing influence, and also some new contacts to make, HR, the Head of Logistics, Accounts and Amanda. The frequency of the interaction between Sue and some of the contacts in the network have also changed in this example as the importance of their relationships change in the light of leading change.

The next step is deciding what action to take in each case to move from diagram one, to diagram two.